Nicole Ives

• PhD
• Professor at McGill University

Immigrant and refugee populations face multiple barriers to accessing mental health services. This scoping review applies the (Levesque et al. in Int J Equity Health 12:18, 2013) Patient-Centred Access to Healthcare model in exploring the potential of increased access through virtual mental healthcare services VMHS for these populations by examinin...

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada calls for closing education gaps between non-Indigenous and Indigenous Canadians as part of the real work of reconciliation, that is, walking the decolonization talk. In Nunavik, a part of Inuit Nunangat, addressing these education gaps is complex, requiring trust building between educational instit...

Resettlement country language literacy facilitates integration and counteracts social and economic marginalization. Thus, access to language learning is a social justice issue. Resettled refugees in Canada are eligible for free English/French language training. Between 2015-2017, Canada resettled 47,735 Syrian refugees. We explored predictors of la...

During the COVID-19 pandemic, mental health services rapidly transitioned to virtual care. Although such services can improve access for underserved populations, they may also present unique challenges, especially for refugee newcomers. This study examined the multidimensional nature of access to virtual mental health (VMH) care for refugee newcome...

The First Peoples’ Post-secondary Storytelling Exchange (2016-2020) is a multi-institutional project funded by a Partnership Development Grant through SSHRC’s Community and College Social Innovation Fund (CCSIF), with support for dissemination from a SSHRC Connections grant. The project is about creating more responsive post-secondary education fo...

McGill University School of Social Work initiated a research project in October 2005 to examine the social work education and ongoing professional needs of the First Nations communities of Kahnawake and Kanehsatake. These communities had previously been served by a 30-credit certificate program. Using qualitative methodology, the project sought to...

Three researchers share their reflections on the challenges and goodness of fit of using participatory action research (PAR) in studies with indigenous peoples in the United States and Canada. Three central challenges of participatory methodologies are identified: (1) defining what constitutes participation; (2) the extended time required for a PAR...

There is little longitudinal research that directly compares the effectiveness of Canada's Government-Assisted Refugee (GAR) and Privately Sponsored Refugee (PSR) Programs that takes into account possible socio-demographic differences between them. This article reports findings from 1,921 newly arrived adult Syrian refugees in British Columbia, Ont...

Purpose This paper presents an analysis of how health intersects with the experience of housing insecurity and homelessness, specifically for migrant women. The authors argue that it is important to understand the specificities of the interplay of these different factors to continue the advancement of our understanding and practice as advocates fo...

There is little longitudinal research that directly compares the effectiveness of Canada’s Government-Assisted Refugee (GAR) and Privately Sponsored Refugee (PSR) Programs that takes into account possible socio-demographic differ-ences between them. This article reports findings from 1,921 newly arrived adult Syrian refugees in British Columbia, On...

In Canada, Indigenous Peoples’ health and wellbeing is linked with the legacies of colonization. A social determinants of health model shifts focus from individual-level health contexts to broader socioeconomic, cultural, and environmental conditions associated with population health outcomes. Education is a key social determinant of health, closel...

The objective of this study was to explore housing insecurity among women newcomers to Montreal, Canada. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 26 newcomer women who had experienced housing insecurity and five women’s shelter service providers. The primary cause of housing insecurity for newcomer women was inadequate income in the face of r...

We explored collaboration between Head Start and refugee resettlement services as a strategy to increase the enrollment of newly arrived refugees' children in Early Head Start and Head Start programs. Both the Office of Refugee Resettlement and the Office of Head Start emphasize self-sufficiency as the primary goal, but their services are not typic...

Navigating settlement is complex and oftentimes stressful for international migrants. Transnational networks may provide support in addressing settlement hurdles, as may settlement or other community organizations. However, elements of the migration experience, including transnational obligations (such as remittances) and transnational networks, ma...

This chapter provides a brief overview of pre-contact culture of the Inuit peoples of Nunavik and some of the post-contact policies that have impacted their families, communities and culture such as whaling practices of colonisers, dog sled massacres, federal schooling and mandatory education, forced re-locations and the handling of the tuberculosi...

The focus of this article is on the use of found poetry as a tool in qualitative research to examine the experience of precarious housing and homelessness among immigrant women in Montreal. Immigrant and refugee women exhibit greater risk for homelessness than women in general or male newcomers due to higher rates of poverty. Yet little is known ab...

During the 20th century, Nunavik’s Inuit population experienced social transformations which have manifested themselves in a range of social issues. Nunavik lies north of the 55th parallel in Quebec, Canada and is one of four regions in Canada that comprise Inuit Nunaat (Inuvialuit, Nunatsiavut, Nunavik, and Nunavut) – Inuit homeland. The Inuit are...

The Faculty of Social Work program at the University of Regina is a broker for two social work programs north of the 60th parallel reaching the northern residents of both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal ancestry. In addition, for over 30 years, the University of Regina partners with the First Nations University of Canada where a specialized Bachelor...

This study explored the perspectives of a multidisciplinary team at an HIV clinic in Canada mandated with addressing the diverse needs experienced by their HIV+ refugee clients. Specifically, the study sought to identify barriers and facilitators to effective service provision for refugee persons living with HIV/AIDS (PHAs) in the context of a mult...

Purpose: Religious congregations are involved in providing services to refugees in the U.S. However, evaluations of refugee integration, at a national level, typically do not carry on past 180 days and little is known about the prevalence of sponsorship among congregations, nor whether certain types of congregations are more likely to report prov...

Inherent in the refugee experience is dislocation. One task for refugees and members of the host country is restoring social ties that have been disrupted. Religious congregations are involved in restoring those ties in refugee resettlement in various ways. This study was undertaken to identify the prevalence and types of services congregations pro...

Resettling refugees are faced with numerous challenges, including learning a new language, addressing mental health issues, finding a stable place of residence, and developing economic self-sufficiency, in addition to familiarizing themselves with a new culture and possibly new technologies for cooking, communicating, and transportation. Multiple a...

This paper presents challenges in delivering social work education in areas that are traditionally geographically, psychologically, and/or linguistically isolated from mainstream Canadian society. Included are discussions using technology to reach these groups. In response to research results from ‘Rethinking Social Work Education for First Nations...

This paper describes the experiences of twenty-four Bosnian refugees resettled in the US and explores how achieving integration relates to the US policy contexts and programs. Juxtaposing refugee perspectives and policies, "lived experience" was compared with policies on paper. Central themes included participants' language and em- ployment struggl...

This chapter summarizes the contemporary situation of children forced to engage in commercial sex work in the Canada, Mexico, and the United States. The chapter provides both a vivid quantitative and qualitative assessment of the underlying factors that contributes to this phenomenon. The prognosis for many of these exploited children is a bleak on...

"A dessertation in social welfare." "Facsimile, made from the microfilm master copy of the original dessertation or master thesis published by UMI"--P. before t.p. Thesis (Ph. D.--Soc. Work)--University of Pennsylvania, 2005. Includes bibliographicl references.